


we who wander this wasteland

by Tedronai



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Age of Legends, Canon Divergence, Gen, Ilyena Lives, Liberal Interpretations of Timeline, The Breaking of the World
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-12 02:32:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9051739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tedronai/pseuds/Tedronai
Summary: The AU in which Ilyena doesn't get stuffed in the fridge.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tywinning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tywinning/gifts).



> Happy holidays to Lauren, the patron saint of dead blond ladies, from the Betrayer of Hope~! :D

Ilyena runs and the world around her is ending. The very foundations of the earth seem to be breaking apart, making the palace that was her home shudder and groan, walls and floors tilting dizzily as she tries to navigate the once-familiar hallways. She doesn’t know what’s going on, but she knows that she must get away.

First, however, she must find her children.

  


She finds the first dead bodies outside the ballroom-turned-command-centre. Delving tells her there is nothing to be done, but leaving her youngest is the hardest thing she’s ever done, harder even than standing aside and letting her husband go through with his suicide mission to seal the Bore. Choking back tears she tells herself that she must focus on finding anyone who might still be alive, anyone she may yet save.

  


She did not expect her husband to be among those still alive, and as the reality of his state becomes clear she finds herself wishing he wasn’t. She nearly runs to him but notices just in time that he’s not alone, and that he’s not—

He’s not himself.

Lews is facing away from her and talking to a man in black, a man Ilyena recognises as Elan Morin Tedronai, a dear friend turned bitter enemy. The Betrayer of Hope speaks and Ilyena can’t hear the words, but their effect is devastating. Lews crumbles, falling to his knees beside a dead body with golden hair, gathering it into his arms. The Betrayer turns his head and meets Ilyena’s eyes, smiling, and though Ilyena can’t see the net of Illusion around the dead woman, she knows what he has done.

As Lews throws his head back, a soul-rending scream resonating through the ruins of their home, drowning out even the Betrayer’s deranged laugh, Ilyena finally snaps out of her trance and flees.

  


Her search proves increasingly futile with every dead child, grandchild, beloved servant and friend she finds. As she leaves each of them in the crumbling hallways, she feels as though she’s leaving behind a piece of her soul until she’s empty, hollow, almost wishing she’d thrown herself between her husband and the Betrayer and been done with it.

  


The rescuers find her in her bedroom, curled up on the bed she’d used to share with Lews.

“Get up!” Moira Almea snaps at her. “We need to get out of here.”

Ilyena can barely muster the strength to look up at the other woman. “They’re all dead,” she whispers.

Moira grabs her arm and forcibly pulls her up to a sitting position. “Not all,” she says, her voice grim and brown eyes intense. “Elana is alive. Her son is alive. You have a daughter and a grandson who need you, Ilyena Dalisar. The world needs every sane Aes Sedai we have left if any of us are to survive. So get up, now!”

Ilyena isn’t sure the word _sane_ can be applied to her, not anymore, maybe not ever again, but she obeys.

  


Moira takes her to an abandoned military base, where a handful of other Aes Sedai are waiting, including Ilyena’s eldest daughter. As she takes in the faces, connecting names to those she can recognise, she realises there is not a man among them. The numbers of the male Aes Sedai took a hit when Lews and his Companions were lost — _presumed lost_ — at Shayol Ghul, but there should have been others left. The group is admittedly small enough that Ilyena could almost chalk it up to coincidence, but something won’t stop nagging at her, some doubt she can’t consciously articulate.

“Where are all the men?” she asks. The image of Lews, clutching a lifeless body that wasn’t her to his chest, flashes before her eyes and she’s suddenly cold in a way that has nothing to do with the dry, biting wind.

“We can’t count on men now,” Moira replies tersely. Then, without elaborating, she begins to direct the others in loading supplies to one of the vehicles abandoned along with the base.

  


Gateways are not working. There’s no way to tell where they will open, if they open at all, and that makes Travelling too dangerous to be worth it. They have a troop carrier that’s some decades out of date but which Elana has managed to get moving again, a supply of water and rations and thermal blankets, and a desperate hope to reach any city still standing and people still fighting.

  


Nights are cold though it should be late spring. They sleep huddled close together for warmth and comfort, though Ilyena suspects she’s not the only one to find the latter lacking. She goes out, clutching the blanket around herself to block out the incessant wind, and finds Elana already there. The younger woman is sitting on the hood, gazing off into the distant horizon.

“What if there’s nobody else?” Elana asks as Ilyena climbs up to sit beside her. “What if they’re all dead. Men gone mad, women and civilians all gone. What if all that’s left are small bands roaming an endless wasteland, like us?”

Ilyena has no real answer to that. “We’ll keep looking.”

Elana is silent for a long time. “I used to pray my son would turn out a channeller,” she said finally. “I didn’t want to have to face the prospect of outliving my child, especially after Jaric decided to join Father on that fool’s errand. But now…” She doesn’t need to finish the sentence; channelling _saidin_ is as good as a death sentence, now. “I can channel. So could Jaric. There’s not much chance that he doesn’t have the ability as well.”

“Maybe he’s not a sparker,” Ilyena offers, though the words ring hollow even to her own ears.

Elana latches onto the hope anyway. “Maybe.”

  


Days in the troop carrier are long, yet the pauses when it breaks down feel even longer though Elana is able to get it moving again each time. Tempers grow short and frayed, and sometimes Ilyena isn’t sure she can bring herself to care about whether the latest crisis gets resolved peacefully. She backs Moira’s efforts to keep everything together anyway, with all of her authority, diminished though it may be due to her husband’s role in their present plight.

Nobody wants to address the fear they all share; with the world all around them heaving and shaking, continents breaking apart and crashing together, would they even find Paraan Disen where it used to be? Yet it’s too late to think of another destination now, even if Paraan Disen wasn’t the closest one; what seems like an expansive mountain range now separates them from Shorelle, and what they glimpsed of Tzora in the distance—

Nobody especially wants to think about Tzora.

Nobody can quite manage to _not_ think about Tzora.

  


Rations are running low by the time they get close to Paraan Disen. They’ve been able to replenish their water supplies, and the ability to channel means they don’t have to worry about the condition of the water; they can purify it as much as they need. As she washes down her meagre dinner with a generous mouthful, Ilyena tries to be grateful for small blessings. If Paraan Disen is where it should be, they should have enough rations to last them the rest of the way if they’re careful.

 

No matter how careful they are, their calculations and preparations are all for nought when the troop carrier breaks down a final time and nothing Elana can do gets it moving again.

“And now what?” someone spits out, voice brittle with exhaustion and fear so pervasive that none of them really feel it anymore.

“Now,” Moira replies, squaring her shoulders and staring down anyone who would dare to argue, “we walk.”

Instead of an explosion, the declaration is met with a defeated silence. They should have been mere days from Paraan Disen; on foot, they’re not going to make it. Somebody begins to cry silently. Elana turns around without a word and returns to her son, still sitting in the now defunct vehicle.

Ilyena looks out over the wasteland, in the direction where Paraan Disen should be.

As she’s staring at the horizon, trying and failing to find a way how things could still work out, something catches her eye. Almost not daring to hope, she spins the threads of Air and Fire for a Farseeing. “Moira,” she gasps as the sight becomes clearer. “Moira, Elana! Look! Over there!”

  


The Da’shain Aiel are carrying wagonloads of angreal and ter’angreal away from Paraan Disen. They can tell little about the situation in the city now, but they can confirm that as of three days ago the city still stood precisely where it should. They make camp and spend the night with Ilyena and the small group, but they must carry on in the morning, and so must Ilyena and her companions. The Da’shain are happy to give them supplies to last the rest of the journey to the city, but beyond that, they can’t help them.

That’s already more than Ilyena would have expected.

A fight still awaits them, a fight for survival in a breaking world, but now they know they’re not entirely alone and that there is something still worth fighting for. Now they have a chance, and Ilyena doesn’t need to consult her companions to know that they’re all determined to make the best of it. They all are.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Alright so I took some liberties with the timeline. It's implied that there was at least around 70 years between the Sealing of the Bore and the Aiel departure from Paraan Disen. I've blatantly ignored those 70 years. We don't know how long it took, after the Sealing, for LTT to get back home to kill everybody, but presumably it was not quite 70 years, so just insert an appropriate amount of time there, and another length of time for the (blatantly Fury Road-inspired) road trip of survival, but it's really not decades here. Just... roll with it, mkay.
> 
> It's also never implied in the Rhuidean flashbacks that Jaric Mondoran was one of the Hundred Companions at all (it's actually more likely that he wasn't), but like with the timeline thing, for the purposes of this fic... now he is. ^^;


End file.
